Environmental Rights and Water Conflicts in Argentina

GUTIÉRREZ, RICARDO A.; CHRISTEL, LUCAS G.

San Francisco

Congreso; XXX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association; 2012

LASA

New environmental rights were introduced in Argentina with the 1994 amendments to the 1853 national constitution. Constitutional recognition of environmental rights is a fundamental step in the advancement of environmental justice and citizenship. But it is not enough. Constitutional principles must be translated into enabling legislation and legislation must be effectively applied and enforced. While some authors focus on administrative and judicial enforcement procedures and institutionalized participation in decision-making (e.g. Azuela 2006, Hajer 1997, Hiskes 2009), we aim to build up an emergent framework that helps analyze the enforcement of environmental rights in Argentina from a broader perspective that goes beyond procedures and institutionalized participation and also takes into account the role of environmental contention. This paper focuses on water-related issues and examines the way environmental contention actualizes otherwise dormant environmental rights in different policy settings. Three modes of environmental contention are distinguished: judicial litigation, social protest, and expert controversy. The paper discusses how these modes manifest themselves and combine in two contrasting settings: river sanitation in the Metropolitan Buenos Aires Region and open-sky mining in Western Argentina.